129 lines
8.1 KiB
Plaintext
129 lines
8.1 KiB
Plaintext
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_____________ _/_/ | | \ \ _/_/ _____________
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| ___________ _/_/ | | \ \ _/_/ ___________ |
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| | c o m m u n i c a t i o n s | |
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| |________________________________________________________________| |
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|____________________________________________________________________|
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...presents... Streets of Beijing
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("Four Year Anniversary")
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by Morrisa Sherman
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06/01/1996-#318
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__///////\ -cDc- CULT OF THE DEAD COW -cDc- /\\\\\\\__
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\\\\\\\/ Everything You Need Since 1986 \///////
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___ _ _ ___ _ _ ___ _ _ ___ _ _ ___
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|___heal_the_sick___raise_the_dead___cleanse_the_lepers___cast_out_demons___|
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It's still raining in Marin County, California. Thunderstorms, in June.
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The parking lot is flooded. Somehow it doesn't seem so bizarre today. It
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wouldn't dare be sunny.
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In March of 1989, my own students at the Nanjing Agricultural University
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fired me. Nothing personal, for they had fired all their instructors so they
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could join the city-wide student boycott of classes and the hunger strike.
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Thus they joined in solidarity with the democracy protestors in Beijing. Every
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day my students joined with other students from Nanjing's eight universities
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and institutes, and marched in the streets alongside of doctors, technicians,
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engineers, botanists, booksellers, and every variety of intelligentsia in the
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city. They carried banners with messages of the movement in organized marches
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that stopped traffic cold all day; they chanted slogans over bullhorns; and
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they flashed insolent grins and smashed bottles on the cobblestones-the words
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"little bottle" in Chinese are a pun on Deng Xiao Ping's name.
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I moved in with my friends in the community of foreign teachers and
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students downtown, and went back to Nanjing Agricultural University a couple of
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times a week to visit my students and to give them informal English practice
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sessions in their dorms. Very informal. I always bought the beer, for their
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stipends were only 20 yuan a month, about the equivalent of US $3. We went to
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the walls of the university, and they translated the rows and rows of posted
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handbills. White butcher paper hand-lettered with large slogans ("We welcome
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to you, Mr. Democracy!" and "The hands that hold our bread are filthy! Join
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the Hunger Strikers!") and neatly written essays about democracy, free speech,
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fair government, and the end of corruption. We talked about the movement, and
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about the new era of freedom they planned to usher in. Some of them decided
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to start a Democracy March to Beijing. I bought a few of them shoes and wished
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them well. Downtown there were no classes either, as we watched the students
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challenge every corrupt principle in China.
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The day the marching started, my boyfriend Phineas the Zambian (also known
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as Chairman) woke me around one in the afternoon in his deep, bass voice.
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"Morrisa, sweet Professah, the time for sleeping is over. The Party is running
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over the students in Beijing with tanks. They have turned the guns on their
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own children, and therefore what respect can they have for the children of our
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mothers? We got to get out of this country, girl!"
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Our friend Hamase had called from Beijing around eleven. He was there
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trying to reach his embassy, and had seen much that morning. He was calling
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from under his bed, for the Army had broken into Beijing University and they
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were firing on the dormitories and the foreigner compounds. The body of a
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child that had been killed in the square had been thrown over the wall into the
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foreigner's compound of Beijing University as an example. Hamase told us to
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remember what he had seen. They were burning thousands of bodies in the
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streets in piles, and that it was not yet noon.
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I managed to get an international call through to my parents. They were
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able to see what was going on because they had television. My mother was
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trying to stay reasonable, but my father was weeping for me to come home. I
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told them I'd try to leave as soon as I could sell some of my artwork and get a
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flight. I told them I'd call every day. I wasn't able to place another
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international call until I reached Hong Kong a week later.
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I heard from other students at Nanjing Agricultural University that the
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People's Army Police had caught up with the students who had begun the march to
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Beijing and had "dispersed" them. When I asked where they were, I found out
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that being "dispersed" meant they were beaten and taken to prison. We wouldn't
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see them again.
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I was not in Tian'An Men on the 4th, so I did not see the images that so
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terrified my parents. The lone man standing in front of the line of tanks, and
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the waves and waves of wrecked bodies that had held the best minds in China. I
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saw these things later, on television, after I returned to America. What I saw
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on June 4th, 1989 was the loss of a generation of heros reflected in the eyes
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of Nanjing. I saw the bereaved wearing white armbands and headbands, walking
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quietly in the streets, never holding still, lest they be arrested for blocking
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the sidewalk. Hundreds of thousands of people, pressed body to body, all along
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People's Road. Angry, sad, disbelieving. They carried big, colorful,
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wheel-shaped arrangements of paper flowers for the dead and laid them under the
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flagpole on the big traffic circle in front of the Jinling Hotel. Beneath the
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Great Flag of China, a second flag flew. It was a white sheet painted with the
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character that meant "Mourning."
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On every wall where the butcher-paper signs hung, a huge character that
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looked like a coffin with an open lid was slashed in dripping red paint across
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all the signs: xue, the character for blood. As far as the eye could see down
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the streets the handbills cried "Blood! Blood! Blood!" On and on.
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And on and on. Years later I can still see the handbills weeping red for
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all those young human beings, all that beauty and hope and brilliance. Shot,
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broken, dead, and burnt in the streets in Beijing.
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.-. _ _ .-.
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/ \ .-. ((___)) .-. / \
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/ \ / \ .-. [ x x ] .-. / \ / \
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-/-------\-------/-----\-----/---\--\ /--/---\-----/-----\-------/-------\-
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/ \ / \ / `-(' ')-' \ / \ / \
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WORLDWIDE \ / `-' (U) `-' \ / WORLDWIDE
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`-' .ooM `-' _
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Oooo / ) __
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/)(\ ( \ Copyright (c)1996 Morrisa Sherman / (/\
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\__/ ) / All rights reserved. Award-winning CULT OF THE DEAD COW \ ) \)(/
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(_/ is published by cDc communications, P.O. Box 53011, oooO _
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oooO Lubbock, TX, 79453, US of A. Edited by Swamp Ratte'. __ ( \
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/ ) /)(\ / \ ) \
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\ ( \__/ Save yourself! Go outside! Do something! \)(/ ( /
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\_) "THE COW WALKS AMONGST US" Oooo
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